Saturday, October 27, 2012

Three Ways to Drain a Lake

Owens Lake, California

Located on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Owens Lake is your classic case of a diverted river that should be draining into the basin. Some of the river flow has been released from the Los Angeles Aqueduct so there is some water there now, but for the most part it is hidden underneath a nice crusty layer of salt. The red color apparently is from massive amounts of bacteria, so don't worry, it isn't chemical runoff from the various mines and refineries in the area.

This particular instance is really a worst case scenario type situation. Oil drilling in a lake over a salt mine seems like a pretty ridiculous way to try to cheat fate and inevitably something was bound to go horribly wrong. The only thing I can find missing from this situation of an oil drill accidentally penetrating a mine shaft creating a massive whirlpool of doom as the salt quickly dissolved in the fresh water is perhaps some sort of SciFi channel type monster that eats the faces of small children.

Situated in the community of Lakeland, Florida, this is actually a case not related to humans. Naturally occurring sinkholes opened in the bed of the lake and it drained over the course of the upcoming days through multiple holes. This is not uncommon in Florida and apparently Lake Jackson drained five times in seven years. Which is nuts. Wikipedia tells me that Scott Lake has been partially refilled since its sudden and unapologetic draining in 2006, but this has not been confirmed since Fox News deleted the reference page. Yes, I'm serious. And this was the Wikipedia page so you know that I am choosing an opportune albeit unimportant issue to give Fox News a hard time about a real issue that is neither fair nor balanced.